Older, but no wiser

Andy Borrows' musings on life and all its confusion, contradictions, richness and opportunities

Saturday, March 20, 2004

An unexpected message

So… it is possible to pick someone else’s book up off the kitchen table, open it at random, and find a significant message, that just happens to answer a question I didn’t even know I was asking:

“There’s a difference between being and doing, and most people have placed their emphasis on the latter.”

“Shouldn’t they?”

“There’s no ‘should’ or ‘should not’ involved. There’s only what you choose, and how you can have it. If you choose peace and joy and love, you won’t get much of it through what you’re doing. If you choose happiness and contentment, you’ll find little of that on the path of doingness. If you choose reunion with God, supreme knowing, deep understanding, endless compassion, total awareness, absolute fulfilment, you wont achieve much of that out of what you’re doing.

“In other words, if you choose evolution – the evolution of your soul – you wont produce that by the worldly activities of your body.

“Doing is a function of the body. Being is a function of the soul. The body is always doing something. Every minute of every day it’s up to something. It never stops, it never rests, it’s constantly doing something.

“It’s either doing what it’s doing at the behest of the soul – or in spite of the soul. The quality of your life hangs in the balance.

“The soul is forever being. It is being what it is being, regardless of what the body is doing, not because of what it’s doing.

“If you think your life is about doingness, you do not understand what you are about.

“Your soul doesn’t care what you do for a living – and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you’re being while you’re doing whatever you’re doing.

“It is a state of beingness the soul is after, not a state of doingness”.